John Rolfe (1585 - 1622) was a member of a group of settlers
who journeyed to Jamestown in 1609. Rolfe’s infant daughter died
on the journey to Virginia. His wife died shortly after arriving
at the colony. Rolfe served as recorder for the colony from 1614
to 1619. He married Princess Pocahontas, the daughter of the
Native American chief Powhatan, in 1614, and they had one son,
Thomas Rolfe. In 1616, John Rolfe returned to England with his
wife Pocahontas. Rolfe returned to Jamestown after Pocahontas’
death on March 21, 1617. Rolfe became a landowner and married
Jane Peirce before his death in 1622.

Jamestown Settlement, 1607-1625

In 1606, the London Company received a royal charter from
King James I to organize an expedition and establish colonies in
North America. The Plymouth Company would establish the
short-lived colony in Maine (see AJ-042). The Virginia Company
set up England’s first permanent colony in Jamestown, Virginia.
Their primary goal was profit; investors hoped settlers would
find valuable natural resources, such as lumber, herbs, pitch,
and even gold, to send back to England. However, the English
government also wanted to resist the Spanish colonization of
North America (see AJ-077 for the report of a Spaniard on the
Jamestown colony.) One hundred and four men and boys came ashore in May
1607-no women arrived until the following year. Over the next
three years almost eight hundred settlers would arrive to
colonize the Virginia coasts-six hundred of them arriving in
1609. Unfortunately, Jamestown was not an ideal spot for a
colony. The low marshy land was not healthy, and clean water
could be difficult to find. Attacks by the Powhatan Indians
began shortly after the English colonists built their first fort
at the Jamestown site. Fighting between the English and Indians
continued, despite the settlers’ reliance on the Indians for
corn during the difficult winters. In addition, many of the
settlers were hardly qualified to farm and survive in this
difficult setting. During the first years, mortality was very
high through disease, starvation, and accident.

Captain John Smith was elected president in September 1608
(see AJ-074 and AJ-075). By enforcing strict discipline and
requiring all settlers to farm, he increased the food supply.
However, a serious injury in 1609 forced his return to England.
One of the original settlers, George Percy (see AJ-073), was
president of the Virginia’s council during the winter of 1609
and 1610, called the “starving time” when only sixty settlers
survived. In June 1610, they decided to abandon the town, but
the arrival of the new governor, Lord De La Ware (see AJ-076)
and his supply ships brought the colonists back to the fort. In
1612, the settlers began to grow tobacco on their
plantations-over time, this successful crop transformed the
colony into a successful venture. John Rolfe is credited with
first planting a marketable tobacco in Virginia. In 1619, the
same year Africans were brought into the colony as slaves, the
first representative assembly in North America was set up-the
Virginia Assembly. In 1624, the Virginia Company dissolved and
Virginia became a royal colony under the governance of the
English Crown.

Document Note

John Rolfe wrote the letter to Sir Thomas Dale, the deputy
governor of the colony, asking Dale to approve of his marriage
to Princess Pocahontas. Rolfe attempted to explain why he, a
devout Christian, desired to marry Pocahontas. He believed that
his marriage was good for the colony and that he would be able
to further the spread of Christian ideals through his role in
Pocahontas’ conversion. Rolfe also conveyed that he and
Pocahontas loved each other and that their union would not
compromise his standing in the colony, or the Church. The letter
was first published in Ralph Hamor’s tract A True Discourse
of the Present Estate of Virginia and the Successe of the
Affaires There Till the 18 of June, 1614 (London, 1615). The
document shown here is from Tyler, Lyon Gardiner (editor),
Narratives of Early Virginia, 1606-1625 (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1907).

The Public Broadcasting Station website on the history of
Africans in America presents a narrative of the early years of
Virginia’s history and explores the settlers’ difficult
relationship with the Native Americans and the introduction of
black slavery at
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part1/title.html.